but flesh and blood needs flesh and blood
by halyorked
Summary: He comes highly recommended and she's sure that that is the only reason that she's even walked into this place. [tattoo artist AU]


He comes highly recommended and she's sure that that is the only reason that she's even walked into this place.

It's not that she doesn't like tattoos, no she loves them, something in the thought of a mark permanently scarred on you, left like a story for other people to read and for you to experience. It's more that for all of the good things that she's heard about the Mikaelson's place, she's heard many more about how incredibly terrifying and awful the Mikaelsons themselves can be.

On Caroline's eighteenth birthday she finally got her first ink. A bird on her left forearm, just far enough down that she can't consider it her wrist. Her mother had been furious when she'd seen it on Caroline's first trip home from school after getting it, and Caroline had loved it even more, had spent days running her fingers across the finally healed skin and tracing the lines there almost in a daze.

She hasn't gotten another one since, but mainly because she has too many ideas and there's no one with the skill that she feels can pull them off. She's not going to get something that she likes done, only to resent it later due to shoddy technique.

That's why when Stefan tells her about this place she jumps on it, thankful for her job and impeccable budgeting that makes it possible for her to do the things that she enjoys. Getting her second tattoo is something that she's been waiting for for something like six years, and she can feel the excitement welling up in her.

She calls to set up a consultation and is surprised that they can fit her in so soon, and after that it's just a waiting and thinking game, trying to decide on what she wants. There are too many ideas bouncing around in her head and while her job is pretty chill with what they'll allow their employees to look like there's a line and she doesn't want to cross it.

(Though there's a guy whose desk is on the same floor as hers and he's got two full sleeves that she can sometimes see through his shirts and she just really wants to get a good look at them. She also wants to know what the people from her high school who had only known her as the goody-two-shoes-control-freak-cheerleading-captain would think of her continuing infatuation with tattoos.)

Caroline decides to go with a flower on the back of her neck, few hard lines and like watercolors painted there with input from the artist of course. She doesn't have anything specific in mind, thinking that blue might be a good idea, maybe a green stem that trails down over the knob of her spine. That's what the consult is for, and Stefan had said that no matter what she wants the Mikaelsons can do it for her.

She's putting all of her faith in what he's saying so she just has to hope for the best.

(And at least if it goes wrong she can blame it all on Stefan and lord it over him forever. She hasn't changed that much since graduating high school.)

Her appointment is for a time after she gets off of work, and she walks into the place with her feet kind of aching and her head's sore from the way her hair is twisted and pulled up and she's thinking that she should have set this up for a day when she didn't have to work, but then she's noticing her surroundings and forgets her terrible day.

The ceiling is high, and even though it's a tattoo parlor, Caroline gets the distinct feeling that she's not dressed well enough. There's a man sitting at behind the front desk, a cup of what appears to be tea in front of him and a book bigger than some of Caroline's text books had been. She doesn't feel like she should interrupt him, but as she gets closer he looks up on his own, and she smiles.

He's got dark hair and a strong jaw and he speaks before she has the chance to open her mouth. "You must be Caroline Forbes." He sounds like he's practiced and gotten a lack of an accent that. There's a strangeness to some of his words, but not in any specific way. "I'm Elijah. Niklaus is running a bit late, but you can wait in his office."

She's led back through the aisle that runs between the rooms one of which she'll undoubtedly be sitting in to get her piece done, and is shown into a room which must be Klaus' office. There's a large desk and a ton of light pouring into the office through the large window and what appears to be a stack of canvases leaning against the wall in the corner.

"Make yourself comfortable. He should be in soon." Caroline thanks him, and with that Elijah is heading back to the front desk. She throws her bag into a chair, grabs a bottle of water and decides to look at the paintings on the wall.

She's used to there being portfolios on the wall, designs and successes lined up for her to see and judge. It's a strange change to see paintings instead. Some are in frames and some are just stretched canvases hanging in a row like a gallery show and she gets so lost in them that she doesn't notice that someone else has walked into the room.

"Do you like it?" Caroline jumps and spins around, hands clutching tighter at her water so that she doesn't drop it. The newcomer has got his head tilted towards the one that she'd just been looking at, and she nods, smiling and stepping towards the chair with her bag in it.

"Yes, of course. It's lovely."

"Thank you." Caroline's half a second away from rolling her eyes at that, when continues speaking and makes her glad she didn't. "It is one that I'm especially proud of."

"Did you paint that?" She doesn't want to think about an attractive man with an accent with artistic skills like that.

But he nods and waves a hand around the room. "I painted all of them. But I take it you're Caroline Forbes?" He's walked across the room and around his desk, and the two of them sit at the same time.

"That's me." And then they're talking about what she wants and where and what colors and at one point he actually walks around the desk to get a reference to know about what size to make it, and then they're done.

"I'll email you a scan of the design sometime within the next day or so, to see if you like it and then we can set up the actual appointment." Klaus is smiling at her, and walking with her towards the door of his office even though when she looks down she can almost see his fingers twitching for a marker or a pencil. He had been a fan of her idea, and apparently he's already ready to get to work on designing it.

She knows that she should have come in with a drawing of her own for him to work with, but as long as she can agree with him on what they end up with and it follows her guidelines she will be happy.

Caroline nods and smiles, says thank you and is about to leave when she can't stop herself from asking, motor mouth that she is, about Klaus' tattoos. "Normally you guys are more visibly inked."

Klaus is wearing a gray Henley, (and she's spent most of the appointment trying to keep her eyes from lingering on the chains around his neck,) but at her question he just reaches his hands up to grab the back of his shirt to pull it up and over his head. She wonders for a moment if he gets half-naked for all of his clients, but then she's actually looking at him and can't keep that train of thought in her head.

Caroline will admit to the fact that she's kind of shallow, and she embraces this as she runs her eyes quickly down and back up Klaus' chest. She can finally see his tattoos.

"I have these." There's a feather that falls apart into birds that fly forward onto his chest, and on the other arm is the head of some jungle cat, she isn't sure. She thinks that she wants to reach out and touch the birds on his shoulder. They're incredibly different from the one that she has but the fact that the two of them have this small thing in common makes something in her chest go all warm.

He's turning around before she thinks that she's had enough time to fully appreciate the birds, but then she's being fascinated by the lone triangle on his back. She taps her fingers against her thigh and adjusts her bag on her shoulder to keep her from reaching out. "And there's this one."

It's another too short period of time, before he's pulling his shirt back and the long line of his back is once again hidden underneath fabric that looks incredibly soft. He's looking at her again and she thinks that he can see through her to her soul and it makes her blush just the faintest bit.

"But don't take my lack of ink as a sign that I'm not good at what I do. I am incredibly good at what I do." He gets this smirk on his face, and that's not helping her at all. "You might even say I'm the best."

She nods and then heads out, walking past Elijah with a smile while hoping that the warmth in her face isn't as visible as she thinks it is.

Caroline's not shocked to find a scan of the tattoo design when she checks her personal email the next day on her lunch break. It's beautiful, with a flower in pink and orange and yellow and it's everything that she wanted. Klaus has suggested that they do it that evening at the same time that they'd met yesterday.

She sends back an email agreeing to it, and doesn't let herself think about the fact the fact that he has an awful lot of free time for someone who is as good as he says he is.

The afternoon passes quickly, and then before she knows it she's getting in her car and heading to get her tattoo, thankful that it's Friday and she won't have to work again until Monday.

She's pulling her hair up as she walks in today, but it's not Elijah sitting at the counter it's a blonde woman. Caroline's hands still in her hair for just a moment, before she finishes twisting it up, pulling an elastic around it.

The girl looks up with a judgmental expression that Caroline has given to probably hundreds of other people in the time since she's been a teenager, but instead of introducing herself like Elijah had, she just goes back to her magazine. Caroline says "alright then," quietly to herself, and then moves to look at the art on the walls out here. She gets the same feeling from these paintings as she had gotten from the ones in Klaus' office and she wonders how many more pieces he has.

It's not a thought that she gets to linger on for very often because just a moment later she hears footsteps and turns to see Klaus joining the blondes in the front room. "Bekah, why didn't you tell me that Caroline had arrived?"

_Bekah_ just shrugs without looking up from her magazine, flipping a page nonchalantly. Caroline would be impressed, but she's Caroline and so she's pretty much an expert at things like that.

"That's my sister, Rebekah. She's a brat." Rebekah squawks out an indignant _"Nik!"_ but he ignores her. "Are you ready to get started?" Caroline nods and smiles, following him down the hallway into a room without even sending Rebekah a mean look as she walks past her.

She sits down and grabs a few bobby pins from her purse to pull some loose strands of hair up with, and a candy bar.

Klaus sends her an odd look as he begins setting out the things he'll need. Caroline's faces flushes red under what's left of the makeup that she'd put on that morning even as she takes a bite, and looks away. "I'm kind of a nervous snacker. Not that I'm nervous, of course! It's just that I get hungry in stressful situations."

He just smiles and looks down, and she knows there's some kind of rule about sterilization and rules and maybe she should just toss the candy out, but it's pretty good and she's not the one doing the tattooing and Klaus hasn't said anything about it, so she just finishes it quickly and tries not to look guilty as she throws the wrapper away.

When she takes her seat, relaxing her head and neck, he tucks a few stray hairs up into the bobby pins already in her hair, before putting transferring the basic outline stencil onto her skin. She knows that there are a lot of details that weren't transferred and most of the color stuff that he's going to have to concentrate on, so she doesn't really say anything, thinking it's better to leave him to it. It's not going to be fun to spend hours in silence, but it's better to be bored than to be unhappy with her new tattoo.

That's why it's such a surprise that he starts talking to her. First they talk about their families he has four siblings where she has none, her parents are divorced and his are dead. She finds that while she's breathing through the sting and pain of it, the calm, even, tone of his voice helps to distract her. It's something she's grateful for.

They talk about his art and her favorite books, their favorite movies and how they both know Stefan. Things are going well, and he takes a break about when they're about halfway through to stretch his hands and to get a drink of water.

"So have you done any traveling?" he asks and even though she's stretching her shoulders, trying to do her best not to wiggle her head around too much.

"No." She drops her eyes to the floor to avoid looking straight at him, trying to use her eyelashes and bangs as a curtain between the two of them. "I've never really been anywhere. Other than my hometown and here, of course." She'd moved to Chicago right out of college, thanking her lucky stars that Elena had decided to move as well.

(Bonnie moved up here a couple of months ago and Caroline is so incredibly thankful to have her best friends near her again that sometimes she can't breathe with it.)

Klaus rolls his chair around to look at her straight on and ducks his head a bit to look her straight in the eye. " Do you want me to let you in on a little secret. There's a whole world out there, waiting for you. Great cities and music and art. Genuine beauty." He leans forward and smiles this small, beautiful smile and she can't do anything more than gape and try to respond.

When she doesn't, Klaus just rolls back to where he'd been before and then she's leaning forward again and the gun is back on and they're working again. There's much less talking this time and before she knows it they're done. She stands and stretches again, takes the mirror that he's holding out to her and moves to stand with her back to the full-length one hanging on the wall.

The tattoo is gorgeous, maybe even more beautiful on her than it had been before. The colors are bright and beautiful standing out against her fair hair and skin, and even though it's small, there seems to be an impossible amount of detail. It takes her breath away.

"It's beautiful. Wow. Thank you so much." She finally tears her eyes away from the back of her neck, to look at him and he's beautiful too, but the thing that gets to her most is the way that he's looking at her. He's staring like she's a piece of art, and he's never seen anything more beautiful. She hands the mirror back, and they bandage her neck.

He tells her the obligatory general care tips, and she writes him a check, trying to ignore the way their hands brush as she hands it over. She grabs her bag, but doesn't slip it onto her shoulder, letting it hang from her elbow to as to not tug at her neck.

She's walking down the hallway to leave when she decides to turn back. Caroline has always been good at taking what she wants so she strides back into the room, confident and hopeful. He's still there, cleaning up last few things, and she knocks on the doorframe to get Klaus' attention.

"I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner." She brings her hand down to rest against her stomach, cocked at an odd angle to keep her purse from slipping to the ground.

She taps her fingers there when he doesn't answer right away, but then he grins at her, big and bright and Caroline waits to makes sure that's she's not being laughed at before she grins back. "I would love to."

He finishes cleaning up and walks over to her, holding his arm out for her to take. She slips her arm into his and holds on, doesn't even let bratty little sister's ruin her good mood, endorphins from the tattoo spilling over into the happiness at the success of having not misjudged Klaus' body language.

(Caroline does send her a look over her shoulder though. Some things you never grow out of.)


End file.
